What is Rajia Hassib reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Rajia Hassib, author of A Pure Heart: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

I read this novel a few months ago, and I still can’t get over how much it pulled me in, especially considering that it’s set in one place (a Mennonite colony) over the course of two days when women gather and, as the title reveals, talk. I could not put it down, and I remain in awe of how Toews managed to make these women, whom many would see as “others,” so familiar, and how she makes their dilemma so relevant to all women. It’s a wonderful exploration of the space women must negotiate when...[read on]

About A Pure Heart, from the publisher:

A powerful novel about two Egyptian sisters–their divergent fates and the secrets of one family

Sisters Rose and Gameela Gubran could not have been more different. Rose, an Egyptologist, married an American journalist and immigrated to New York City, where she works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gameela, a devout Muslim since her teenage years, stayed in Cairo. During the aftermath of Egypt’s revolution, Gameela is killed in a suicide bombing. When Rose returns to Egypt after the bombing, she sifts through the artifacts Gameela left behind, desperate to understand how her sister came to die, and who she truly was. Soon, Rose realizes that Gameela has left many questions unanswered. Why had she quit her job just a few months before her death and not told her family? Who was she romantically involved with? And how did the religious Gameela manage to keep so many secrets?

Rich in depth and feeling, A Pure Heart is a brilliant portrait of two Muslim women in the twenty-first century, and the decisions they make in work and love that determine their destinies. As Rose is struggling to reconcile her identities as an Egyptian and as a new American, she investigates Gameela’s devotion to her religion and her country. The more Rose uncovers about her sister’s life, the more she must reconcile their two fates, their inextricable bond as sisters, and who should and should not be held responsible for Gameela’s death. Rajia Hassib’s A Pure Heart is a stirring and deeply textured novel that asks what it means to forgive, and considers how faith, family, and love can unite and divide us.

Visit Rajia Hassib's website.

The Page 69 Test: In the Language of Miracles.

Writers Read: Rajia Hassib.

--Marshal Zeringue